Wednesday 6 November 2013

11 months

kiki is one month shy of a year old today!  she is officially walking.  she still prefers to crawl when she has to get somewhere in a hurry, and she staggers like a cruz bay drunk, but a couple days ago she walked all the way across the apartment to me. that same day, while i was at work, colby taught her how to clap. we had never specifically tried to teach her that before so she's probably way late on it.  it's so cute when she walks and claps at the same time!

we've had a total relapse with her eating habits and i'm not sure why.  she won't let me feed her anything from a spoon or fork except greek yogurt.  she's very interested in what's on our plates and grabs at our food, but if we offer it to her she backs away.  i try to share everything i eat with her, but she's only eating a few nibbles here and there.  she also stopped caring about the sippy cup and will only take sips out of it occasionally.  i put some regular milk in her bottle once and she chugged it, so i tried milk in the sippy and she looked at me as if i had betrayed her.

i've been fighting off a nasty staph infection in my head for the past week.  colby had to take some time off work because i was in so much pain.  i've been trying to be as "hands off" as possible to lower the risk of spreading the infection to kiki, so she and colby have been bonding even more than usual.  it's the most amazing thing in the world to see them together.  he is so sweet and loving and she adores him.  she cries every time he walks out the door, and sometimes even when he just leaves the room.  they both love their "kiki dada days" when i go to work and they hang out at home all day.

Thursday 24 October 2013

10 months

ok, this is super late getting posted, but i'll try not to include any of the recent developments over the past few weeks.  kiki is ten months old! she's still not walking, but oh my goodness is she a climber. she can climb up onto the bottom shelf of our wicker console table, across to the other side, and back down without any help. she can also get herself entirely out of a walker or an exersaucer. she climbed into a bin full of toys, leaned over until it flipped on its side and then crawled out over the mess as if nothing had happened.  we aren't encouraging walking but honestly, it might be preferable to climbing.

she's only ten months old, but our little jet setter baby has already been on seven separate plane flights and she was an absolute dream 99% of the time.  we recently took a two week trip to visit our families in the states, and although we had every possible problem in the world with spirit airlines, kiki barely protested. the hardest part was keeping her from happily squealing at the sleeping people in the seats around us.  as it turns out, not everyone likes babies even if they are happy ones who rarely ever cry.  a lady next to me put a sweater over her head to take a nap and kiki, thinking the lady was playing peekaboo, snatched it off her head and laughed so hard.  i felt bad but it still cracks me up when i think about it.

the first part of our trip involved going to my grandparents' memorial and funeral, so kiki (and colby) got to meet almost all of my family for the first time.  i'm pretty sure cousin rachel was her favorite!  while we were there we got to wear pants and sweaters and cuddle under a blanket on the porch at night.  i even wore a scarf and boots a few times.  if you've never had island fever that probably doesn't sound very exciting, but it was amazing to me and i was afraid i'd never want to come back.  luckily by the end of the second week, we were missing our island home.  two weeks was the exact amount of time to get all the starbucks, chipotle, and mellow mushroom that we needed (and of course see our families!) and then return to paradise, fulfilled and ready to face another high season.  bring on the tourists.

Saturday 14 September 2013

9 months

monkiki is 9 months old! she is 29.5 inches long and weighs 19 lbs. she's standing unassisted, but not taking any steps yet. we're not encouraging her to walk though, because she's already into everything! she's mimicking words, waving, blowing kisses, crawling super fast, and eating just about everything. her favorite food is plain greek yogurt, but she also loves garlic quinoa & brown rice, toast, sweet potato puree, and pizza crust. a few things she has tried and liked and then fed to the dog: broccoli, meatloaf, sweet potato fries, french fries, and blueberries. i made her some teething biscuits with the surplus of baby oatmeal cereal and she loved those, but sebastian loved them more. she has learned that if she holds something out to him, he will take it from her hand and then she watches him eat it and laughs. it might be time to get her a high chair after all.

she continues to love music more and more. anything remotely resembling music makes her dance, and sometimes she even sings and dances and bangs on things just because. i woke up the other morning to her tapping a beat on the mirror and singing "la la la la" all by herself in the pack n play. i think we have a future musician or dancer!
this is our unanimous favorite picture of her from the past month. she is such a silly girl, always making funny faces!

Wednesday 7 August 2013

8 months

i can't believe our little kiki cat is 8 months old! she's the sweetest, silliest girl in the world. she's growing like crazy and doing new things every day. she's now pulling up to stand, cruising all day around the outside of the pack n play, and has even gotten confident enough to practice letting go which of course results in immediate falling. i expect she'll be walking relatively soon though, as determined as she is to stand unsupported. she's drinking water out of a sippy cup on her own, letting me feed her purees and greek yogurt from a spoon, and feeding herself non-slimy things like chunks of cheddar cheese and pizza crusts. she says "mama" all the time, usually when she's screaming from another room to get me to come back. in the past few days she has started waving, but mostly just to herself in the mirror. she has full control of the walker and it's beyond cute to watch her run as fast as she can toward colby! it's just a preview of the days when she's older and can run into his arms. i can't wait for that.

she's still obsessed with our laptops, so i got out colby's clunky old toshiba and we let her pull up to the coffee table in her walker and bang on it. she loves it so much she screams at the top of her lungs. other things she loves but should not: cords of any kind, our phones, ipods, CDs, amazon boxes, and dish sponges to name a few. she has a few favorite toys, but would ditch any of them in a heartbeat for the things i just listed.
we finally got her to enjoy the water last week! we've been trying and i think the temperature has been too cold for her liking, but we drove out to hawksnest one afternoon recently and i walked confidently right into the water with her before she even realized what was going on. once she discovered it was just like bath time but with salty water, she was hooked! she started splashing like crazy and squealing, then licking the salt off of her lips. we can't wait to get her back in the water.


Saturday 6 July 2013

7 months

cat scratch fever is 7 months old today! she is doing so many new things i hope i can remember all of them. she can sit up easily and in fact refuses to lie down for diaper changes now. she's still  fitting in some of her 3 month onesies and wearing size 2 diapers, but is in 9 mo. jammies and even fits into a few 12 mo. things, which means pretty soon she'll be dressed in nothing but hello kitty. she's now able to wear her juicy shoes that are for 1 year olds if that tells you how big her feet are.

we finally made some progress with food. a couple weeks ago, i was eating a banana and she was opening her mouth so i let her nibble on it. she went crazy and took a few good bites, chewed, and swallowed. from then on, i started letting her taste what i'm eating if it's not spicy. so far she has gnawed on quite a few bananas, a nectarine, a celery stalk, a couple pizza crusts, and a johnny cake. she has also licked pizza sauce, a sour cream and onion chip, and had a taste of ice cream. she still doesn't like to touch sticky stuff like avocado and banana, but she's comfortable with a pizza crust so maybe she's just prissy. she still refuses all foods from a spoon and i'm starting to worry that it's her lip tie preventing her from using the spoon comfortably. we've tried oatmeal many times, baby food bananas and sweet potatoes, and she pushes it all out with her tongue and gags.

she is such a silly girl and enjoys scratching anything and everything. her favorites are the back of the chair we sit in together and the top of my laptop which makes a sound like a dj scratching a record. she laughs and screams while she does it. colby calls her cat scratch aka kizzy skrizzy. she thinks that knocking on the table is hilarious. she loves to imitate me using my laptop. she rolls up to the coffee table in her walker and aggressively pushes all the keys on the keyboard. yesterday she ripped my F5 button off! she once again likes to hang upside down and now also cracks up when we bounce her and throw her in the air. she is very comfortable playing independently, which is great because i'm now taking her to work with me at a real estate office for 4 hours 2 days a week. she can roll around playing with toys in the pack and play for sometimes 2 hours straight without needing anything more than a wave from me to make sure i'm paying attention to all the cool stuff she's doing.

and now for the biggest news of all... on the 4th she figured out how to crawl AND sprouted 2 razor sharp bottom teeth all in one day!

Saturday 29 June 2013

"it's not that serious"

i find myself thinking this so many times every day, particularly when it comes to discussing parenting with other women. babycenter is an annoying non-stop barrage of neurotic mothers stressing over the tiniest of things. how and when do i transition my baby from this thing to this thing? how many ounces should my baby be eating on this exact schedule every day? how and when and what kind of solids can i feed, and will she choke or die or poop a different color or texture? i need the most expensive, fanciest car seat and high chair or my baby will die, right? if she's in the walker for more than 20 minutes will she get hip dysplasia? my sister in law let my baby lick a popsicle... is she ruined for life? i made a bottle an hour and 15 minutes ago, did it magically turn into poison after exactly one hour?!

just stop. we should of course strive to be the best parents we can be, but how good can we be if we can't trust our instincts and simply enjoy our sweet little babies? feed your baby when she's hungry. give her some baby food or a chunk of whatever you're eating when you feel like it. it's not necessary to stress about the life time effects of not breastfeeding your kid until she's 5 and feeding only organic non-gmo homemade baby food recipes you found on pinterest. all car seats sold in the US have to meet very high minimum standards. high chairs are high chairs. i could go on and on, but i'll just say it's not a competition and it's not that serious.

i have an extremely easygoing baby and maybe i'll eat my words some day when i have another one, but i believe she is so easy and relaxed because we are. i have no idea how many total ounces of formula she eats per day. when i wanted to stop swaddling, i swaddled her with one arm out for a few nights, then no arms for a few nights and then a sleep sack or no swaddle. i didn't ask anyone what to do or freak out every day over how it would go that night. kitten used to take hours to nurse to sleep and only nap on me. it was exhausting, but i kept trying periodically to put her down for naps and eventually she figured it out with no drama or crying it out or sleep training or stress.

this isn't to say that we shouldn't do all the research and make good decisions, but if you find yourself panicking over the latest greatest baby product or something you think you should be doing to be a better mom than the next lady, take a deep breath and relax because it's just not that serious.

Saturday 8 June 2013

when i was 22, i was diagnosed with endometriosis and advised that i would have problems conceiving. i loved my doctor and trusted her opinion when she told me that i would need infertility treatments and that after 30 it would probably be completely impossible for me to get pregnant. around that time there was a tv commercial with a mom changing her baby and kissing his feet. i don't remember what the commercial was for, but i do recall crying and thinking that was all i wanted and i would never be happy until i had that. as my 20s flew by, i started losing hope.

yesterday as i changed cat's diaper, i kissed her little feet and she giggled. i remembered that commercial and smiled. it's more amazing than i ever imagined all those years. she's our perfect little miracle baby and she brings us so much happiness!

Thursday 6 June 2013

6 months

it's kitten cat's half birthday today! she's now rolling both ways and can occasionally sit up from laying flat on her back if she rolls to one side first. she sits up longer and better every day. when she's bored with sitting, she throws herself into a crawling position and inch worms around. the only time she'll attempt a real crawling motion is when she's trying to get to the dog, and she's not very good at it. she has been noticing sebastian more and more every day, and loves to pet him. he's surprisingly tolerant of her occasional fur-grabs, but most of the time she just rubs her hand across his back gently.

cat loves her walker and has figured out how to move it where she wants to go, which is pretty much always either straight for sebastian or the box fan in the living room. that thing hurts when she runs over your feet! she isn't doing as much talking with the consonant sounds lately, but she's laughing up a storm. she loves the words "stupid" and "stop" and laughs hysterically when we say them. she also cracks up when i knock or tap on things, especially the mirror.

we tried oatmeal cereal once and avocado a few times and so far have had zero success with solid food. she threw up all her formula one day, so in a desperate attempt to keep some food down, we offered cereal. she hated it and also threw that up. a few weeks later we gave her a slice of avocado and she ignored it. i tried showing her how to eat it and handing it back to her, but she wasn't interested whatsoever. i mashed some up on a spoon and tried to feed it to her, but she made a face and spit it right back out. every time we've tried since then, she has been uninterested and then sebastian stole it!

we are officially cloth diapering and only using 1 or 2 disposables a day because right now i only have 4 pocket diapers. i'm probably going to order about 6 more and get some bamboo inserts and we'll be 100%. i've been putting a disposable on her in the afternoon before she poops because i'm afraid of washing poo diapers, but she got me today so we'll see how that goes when i do the laundry tomorrow.

Sunday 19 May 2013

5 months

i'm super late getting this posted, but chatty catty is 5 months old. we got her measured a little bit late, but she was almost 15 lbs and 26 inches, which means she grew 2 inches in one month! she went from 25-50th percentile to 75th in a matter of weeks. she can sit up from a slight incline and stay sitting up straight for a long time. she sometimes throws herself forward and gets into a crawling position, but then she gets cranky and rolls onto her back. she has yet to roll back to her belly, but it seems like she just isn't interested in doing that because she hates tummy time. she's still an excellent sleeper, going for 10-12 hours straight at night and then taking 2 very long naps every day. she's always been a good night sleeper but a terrible napper, however over the past month she has been learning how to soothe herself to sleep and that means she doesn't have to sleep attached to me anymore. i miss it, but i can actually get things done now so it's for the best. i noticed that she was waking up in the morning, sucking on her fingers and going back to sleep without any crying, so i tried putting her down for naps as soon as she starts rubbing her eyes, and it worked perfectly! she stares at the striped curtain in the bedroom, sucks on those fingers, talks to herself a little, and falls asleep in 5 minutes. she's amazing.

we finally threw in the towel on breastfeeding after she became too distracted to stay latched and i'm not able to pump enough to make it worthwhile to continue. we fought hard for those 5 months and i can say i did everything i could for her. we're waiting until at least 6 months to start solid foods, at which point we will skip purees and start giving her steamed veggies that are soft enough for her to explore without risk of choking. my mom got kitten a walker that has a removable toy bar, so we plan on using the walker with the plain tray instead of also having a high chair. i can already picture sebastian following the walker around the house, cleaning up the trail of food she leaves behind her.

in addition to sitting up, she's getting good at using her hands. she can grab the giraffes on her walker, pull them down, stand up, and put them in her mouth with near-perfect accuracy. she also loves to stick her hands inside my mouth, or grab my hands or lips and aggressively shove them into her mouth while growling. she babbles constantly and makes all kinds of consonant sounds (la, ga, da, ma) and when her hand is in her mouth she says something that sounds a whole lot like "i love you," so i always say "i love you too, baby girl!" i know she's not really saying that, but maybe it will turn into that... you never know!

Saturday 13 April 2013

kitten dictionary

starfish [stahr-fish]
verb
what kitten does when her startle reflex kicks in for no reason and her arms and legs fly out straight in a starfish position.
i kissed cat while she was studying her hands intensely, causing her to starfish.


cheese [cheez
noun
1. partially digested, curdled spit up. 
you've got a little chunky cheese on your shirt.
 
verb
2. the act of spitting up.
oh no, she cheesed me!

Saturday 6 April 2013

4 months

kitty long legs is 4 months old today! i don't have any stats on her height or weight, but i can tell you she's growing like a weed. she's still wearing size 1 diapers and 3 month onesies, but she's in 6 month jammies and pants thanks to those legs she gets from her dad. they say it's too early to tell how tall a child will be when they are older, but i think it's pretty safe to say she's going to be taller than me.

her eyes are still dark blue, with a lighter blue ring around the inside. my eyes are brown and green and colby's are multi-color green. our moms both have blue or green eyes and our dads have brown, so there's no punnet square thingy to even attempt to guess, but i have a feeling they are going to be unique and of course gorgeous. her dark hair has almost completely fallen out except for the mullet in the very back, and golden blonde hair is coming in on top. colby and i were both blonde as kids, so this is no surprise.

kitten babbles and laughs all the time now and loves to blow spit bubbles all down the front of her shirt. hands are still super cool to stare at and chew on, and she's starting to grab at the flower with both hands while "talking" to it, or maybe she's singing. she's trying really hard to master sitting up, but hasn't quite gotten it. she actually gets mad when i lay her across my legs or cradle hold her like a baby and she fights to try to sit up. if i let her grab my fingers, she can pull herself up to sitting and wobble around for a while. she also very much likes to stand up on our laps, and she thinks it's so funny to stand on one leg. she can roll front to back, but since she never lays on her back we're not sure if she can roll the other way yet. based on her boppy gymnastics and sitting/standing abilities, i'm not concerned about it or going to risk puke volcanoes by putting her on her back to work on it.

she's still sleeping through the night with hardly any exceptions. there's supposed to be a 4 month sleep regression, but i've discovered that if she does wake up in the middle of the night i can rock her back to sleep in the bouncer without even picking her up so hopefully that's the extent of it. maybe i'll regret bragging, but this little angel sleeps 8-12 hours straight right now, so even a slight regression for her would still leave us all well rested.

basically, she's a happy, healthy, perfect, sweet 4 month old baby!

Sunday 17 March 2013

island life

when we first found out i was pregnant, we had to decide if we wanted to stay here or move back to the states for a more comfortable, "normal" life with her. we knew it would be a challenge, but we decided to stay here and trade easy for awesome. now that we're a few months into this adventure, i've been thinking about all the ways that we do things differently here.

the thing that really got me thinking about this is how we get diapers. originally we wanted to cloth diaper. unlike most stj residents, we do have our own washer and dryer in our apartment (well, on the patio, but still...) however it doesn't have hot water connected to it. we decided to go with disposables for the first few weeks/months until we got the hang of parenthood in general and then switch to cloth, but i'm still on the fence because of the extra effort to do cold water. in the meantime, we have to order diapers online from walmart.com far enough in advance that we don't run out. i ordered some last week and they finally arrived yesterday, but we receive our mail at a place called connections that has a community PO box. because this is an island and you can do whatever the hell you want here, connections is closed today. kitten only has enough diapers for the rest of today and connections is also closed tomorrow! the grocery store here doesn't carry newborn or size 1 diapers and no pampers, just huggies, which kitten blows out of every time she poops. they sell small packs of diapers at about twice as much as they cost at walmart.

if we lived in the real world, we could just run out to any 24 hour kroger, walmart, walgreens, whatever any time of the day or night and get her anything we need. here, the pharmacy closes at 6:30 and the grocery store at 9, so if you need anything at night you're SOL. before she was born, i made sure to stock up on anything we might need just in case, but now that she's getting older we need to stay ahead of her changing needs. she could be teething soon, so i'll have to be prepared for that, for example.

another unique thing about life here is that we only own one car and it's really all we need. colby usually walks to work, and if we need anything in town, i just put kitten in the ergo and walk. it would take me longer and be more of a hassle to put her in the car seat, drive to cruz bay, find a parking spot, take her out of the car seat, etc. etc. instead i pop her in the ergo and we're there in 5 minutes. we can get to the clinic in 10 minutes tops! any time we feel like it, we can walk up to the resort to see colby at work, and he can come home to see us for lunch every day. we don't own one of those car seats with the carrier part that comes out because we can wear her everywhere so she just has the cheapest basic car seat we could find and she's been in the car maybe 5 times total. we also don't own a stroller. the terrain here is not very stroller friendly, and again it's so much easier to wear her.

as she gets older i'll have to remember to post about the different island challenges. for example, i haven't yet figured out how to bathe a toddler without a bath tub!

Wednesday 6 March 2013

recently a blog post was making the rounds on my birth board and facebook, "i became a mother and died to live." it came highly recommended, with comments about how dead on it was and it brought many women to tears. i read it a few times and just couldn't see what the big deal was. it contains such dramatic lines as "a heart mourning the woman that once was, and a soul shaking under the weight of a new giant world." meh. for me, there is no mourning, no shaking. i realized that the reason for my lack of reaction is that i didn't recently become a mother; i've always been one. i was born to do this and it's all i've ever wanted. this is who i was all along and all i needed was the baby to make it complete.

i hear a lot of women say they weren't ready, and then they comfort themselves by saying that no one is ever ready. excuse me! please do not project your insecurities on the rest of us. i couldn't have been more ready. i was 31, going on 32. i had spent the previous 8 years believing that i had infertility issues and that my dream of having children was going to be difficult to achieve, if not impossible. i partied. i dated. i had a career. i left it behind. i lived in new york city. i moved to a new city on a greyhound bus. at the age of 30, i sold all my belongings and moved to a caribbean island with one suitcase, my dog and a man i'd known for a month. i've done it all and once i found colby, my absolute perfect partner, the only thing that was missing in my life was my amazing daughter. our amazing daughter.

before sweet catherine, we were already homebodies, so there is no social life to mourn. i've never loved my body, so i can't say i'm that upset about it being a little saggy these days. i don't feel lonely or isolated, in fact i feel more loved and supported by my friends and family than ever before. even though our baby girl was a surprise and we aren't financially well off, i've never questioned if this was a mistake. sometimes it doesn't even feel real, but this is exactly how it was meant to be.

as far as i'm concerned, i was not a different person this time last year. and if i was, i don't miss her at all.


3 months

sweet baby cat is 3 months old today! yesterday was the first time she held a rattle for an extended period of time and seemed to understand that shaking it was fun. she's been staring at her hands and shoving her entire fists in her mouth for the past few days. this morning she found her thumb and sucked on it for 30 seconds, saw me looking at her, gave me a huge smile and lost the thumb. i'd rather she not develop a thumb sucking habit, but it's adorable watching her figure it out. she doesn't take pacifiers, so we're trying to find a balance between letting her explore the oral stage and picking up a bad habit that will be hard to stop.


she still hates tummy time, and can't lie on her back for very long because of her spit up problems, so we have no idea if she's capable of rolling over yet, but she sits up very well for her age. she still loves the butterflies in her play gym, the musical flower, and she'll even stare at her pink blanket from aunt grace for long periods of time, studying the texture. she's very independent when she wants to be, but you better pick her up when she's ready for some cuddles or she will have a meltdown in a hurry! i posted recently that she wasn't interested in mirrors and later that day i took her to the mirror to try again and she loved it. she smiles and acts shy when she sees herself. we try to do a little bit of mirror time every diaper change.

we finally received the ergo carrier last week and i've been wearing her quite a bit. we walked down to cruz bay and sat on the beach to enjoy a few happy hour beverages. she was so sweet and only got a little fussy for a minute, but once she was back in the carrier she went to sleep for the hike home. yesterday we walked back into town to get her birth certificate and again she was so good! we were out for 3 hours and she got a tiny bit fussy at the bank before falling asleep for the entire walk home in the rain. she only poops once or twice a day, so it's making outings with her a lot easier than they once were.

in other news, we are thinking she might be big enough finally for cloth diapers. the cover that came with the econobum trial was way too big for her tiny little tushy when she was in newborn size and the prefolds are still looking too bulky for her skinny size 1 butt. i did some research and it looks like if we use vinegar and sunlight, we can still cloth diaper without access to hot water. it seems like a lot of work so i'm not sure it's right for us, but we should at least give it a fair shot.

Friday 1 March 2013

sweet catherine is 12 weeks old and already has so many nicknames. there's no way i could list them all, but i can try!

kitten, cat, catten, kitten-cat, kitty, kiki, kitty-kate, kitton, petite chaton, bebe cat, baby girl, baby doll, catamaran, sweet girl, tiny cat, hello kitten, smelly cat, chunky cheesy, chatty cathy, wiggle worm, sqwerm... and a million more.



Saturday 23 February 2013

daredevil

our little future olympic gymnast is 11 weeks old and tired of being a baby already. she is ready to start doing stuff!


Tuesday 19 February 2013

kitten has made so much progress this week i couldn't wait to post about it. last week, she was nursing at night in bed, looking up at me instead of sleeping. i was getting a little frustrated because it was way past her bedtime. i asked her why she didn't want to sleep and she gave me a wicked little smile so i smiled back at her and she started laughing! i laughed because that was the cutest thing i've ever seen and that made her laugh even more so we had a little 1 AM giggle fit together while colby slept peacefully next to us. yesterday, we were cooing and babbling at each other and she was just smiling away. i turned my head to the side and sneezed and she cracked up. i started fake sneezing and she laughed every time. when colby got home from work i tried it again and she laughed for him too. it's official, kitten is laughing!
another big development -- she's starting to figure out hands. we noticed yesterday that they aren't in constant fists anymore and it seems like she's stretching her hands and feeling her little fingers moving all the time now. today, i put her in her play gym propped up on the boppy where her hand would bump into the elephant rattle. she got excited about the butterflies, flailed her arms and bumped the elephant then got super excited about that and grabbed at it repeatedly. before i was never sure if it was intentional, but it definitely is now. she also likes to feel the crinkle on the flower toy my cousin rachel sent her. she's still very fascinated with the black and white contrast images in the genius baby book grandma sent but doesn't like the baby faces at all. she's not interested in mirrors but her eyes get big when i show her pictures of herself on my phone.


Friday 15 February 2013

10 weeks

our sweet valentine is 10 weeks old! she smiles constantly, even when she wakes up hungry with a 3 lb wet diaper in the morning. she loves baths, talking to walls, and aerobatics with dad. she got to go to the beach for the first time on valentine's day. the water was too cold and rough, but she got a little sand in her diaper and wore her sunglasses for the first time. she is just starting to notice sebastian and when he got too close she grabbed a handful of his fur and wouldn't let go. he didn't react so that's a good sign. she's discovered her hands and tries to suck her thumb with occasional success. and she is HEAVY. we haven't weighed her lately but every time we pick her up it's a surprise. if i had to guess she's over 11 lbs. that's pretty impressive considering she was just a tiny peanut at birth!


Sunday 10 February 2013

kittenwearing

i'm still 10 lbs over my pre-pregnancy weight and not quite back into my clothes. it is time to do something about that, so i bought this ergo sport carrier and i cannot wait for it to arrive so we can start hiking! isn't it cute? can you picture colby wearing this?
kitten loves the sling around the house, but i wore her down to cruz bay a few days ago and we were both sweating so much. this thing is lightweight, quick-drying, breathable fabric, vented to stay cool, and holds up to 45 lbs so we can both carry her in it for a long time. as soon as it gets here, i'm taking her on an awesome hike. i'm a little nervous about her frequent poo-splosions, but we'll cross that bridge when we get to it :)

Wednesday 6 February 2013

2 months!

our beautiful, perfect island baby is 2 months old today. she smiles non-stop, eats 4-5 oz at a time if we let her, sleeps 6-8 hours straight, and loves her dad almost as much as she loves staring at the shadow the ceiling fan makes on the wall. she's growing so fast and officially no longer fits in her newborn size sleepers. she still hates tummy time but she loves to "stand" and holds her head up and looks around. the other day i put her on the boppy for tummy time and she literally crawled over it. those long legs are scary strong. she's been giggling a little bit here and there, and once after she exorcist-vomited on colby, she actually laughed. we can't wait for her to start laughing all the time!



Thursday 24 January 2013

kitten is 7 weeks old today! she has eyebrows finally. she smiles and laughs, follows objects if you move them in front of her face, and is the prettiest girl in the world. her eyes are still blue and her hair is just a little bit thicker and darker than it has been. she's doing lots of babbling and just a couple days ago started making a "g" sound. any time she sees colby, she instantly lights up and smiles. she hates tummy time, but when i hold her in sitting and standing positions, she holds her head up and turns it from side to side, so her head control is where it should be. she's been out of the house a few times, but we mostly just hang out at home where she's a super happy baby. she only fusses if she needs something, otherwise she's staring at me while i sing or talk to her, hanging out in her play gym cooing at butterflies, or sleeping. she sleeps about 10 hours at night, usually a 5-6 hour stretch to start, followed by 2-6 hours (sometimes broken into 2). i can't complain at all!


Tuesday 22 January 2013

big girl

kitten's nana and poppy are here this week and she is making big changes just in time for them to see her develop a personality.  it's so much fun watching her smile and giggle and become a person. she's a very happy girl, but good lord can she EAT! some days she's nursing for 2 hours at a time, 1 hour off and then she's starving again. she is eating 4 oz bottles of formula and then demanding more within an hour. she's growing so fast, i swear she gets heavier every time i pick her up. this morning i threw away her last newborn size diaper and we're moving up to size 1. it's such a dumb thing to be sad about but i can't help it.

Wednesday 9 January 2013

fatty mcfatpants

tiny cat isn't so tiny anymore. today she weighs 8 lb 7.5 oz and is 21 inches long. she still fits in newborn clothes and diapers but not for much longer. we have been trying to get her off the formula and 100% breastfed but she's happy, healthy, and growing so well i don't know why we would even bother at this point. when colby has the day off he wakes up with her in the morning so i can catch up on sleep. he gives her a bottle and they hang out on the couch. i don't want to take away her mornings with dad :)

look at her flashing the official gang sign of the virgin islands. VI! lol

Sunday 6 January 2013

1 month

bébé kitten is one month old today! she has gained a slightly better understanding of what hands are and uses them to block the pacifier or bottle. a few times she has reached for the turtle on her bouncer and touched it, but it's hard to say if she's doing that on purpose just yet. she makes solid eye contact and pays close attention when i sing to her in my arms. she's showing the first signs of social smiles, but nothing consistent yet. she's been holding her head up impressively since the beginning, but now with less wobbling! we find out on wednesday how much she has grown and i can't wait.

Saturday 5 January 2013

adventures in babywearing

i'm not the crunchiest of moms, but i really wanted a carrier of some sort because strollers aren't very useful here on the island. as it turns out, this sling we received as a gift from dr. sharon is AWESOME. i've tried putting her in it a few times over the past 24 hours and she wasn't loving it because she's been gassy/fussy, but today she nursed until she passed out with milk pouring out of her mouth and then i stuck her in here and went about my day. she's so content she slept right through me making lunch, using the microwave, toast popping out of the toaster, and she's still passed out on my chest snoozin as i write this. look how comfy and peaceful she is!


Wednesday 2 January 2013

funny faces of kitten

i swear she's not this fat, but i can't stop laughing at this picture:
and this is her best poop face:

i made a special photo album just for silly kitten faces.